Samson Update #4

Hey everyone!

As we continue to support Samson, today we are back with update #4! This one is packed with fixes and improvements across the board. To highlight a few: we've reworked how the police pursuit works to make them feel more dynamic, tightened up combat to make fights flow more naturally, and squashed a number of bugs. There are also some QoL additions, such as the option to skip cutscenes.

As always we are present in the steam forums and on our discord server. We value your feedback and input so make sure to share your thoughts!

Read full changelog below!

Missions & Jobs

• Addressed some issues which prevented Story Chapters appearing if the player's game got into a bad state, this should prevent this from occurring in the future as well as for those currently affected

• Various issues addressed for Chapter 8 "He Has Risen" to make the logic more robust and prevent future issues occurring

• Addressed an issue which prevented Objective descriptions and markers showing for Chapter 11 "Crucifix Connection"

• Player should no longer be able to get locked in the Containers during Chapter 12 "Rosary Requiem"

• Addressed various issues with dying, accepting defeat then replaying missions the next day that would prevent or confuse progress, if you still encounter a case of this please do let us know on our Discord or Steam Bug Reporting discussion group

• Ambushers should now spawn properly during the "Not too old for Shit" Job. This should also fix most cases in other Jobs where expected combatants were not spawning in.

• Jack missions should now show the correct number of required items to be collected in the HUD

Vehicles

• Several changes to how Enforcement encounters work to make them feel more fair and less frustrating. Rather than knowing exactly where you are at all times, instead the Player will generate Breadcrumbs that the Police can follow, the Police will consume these breadcrumbs while pursuing the player and once the last is consumed, if they then still don't see the player, they will start to search for them in a more "random" manner. This should reward the Player for more effectively hiding from the Police and make the experience more engaging

• Further tweaks to lower the time required to escape during Wanted events further on each subsequent time the Escape Cooldown is triggered. Lowered to 3 from 5 seconds for each escape, max reduction is lowered to 12 from 20 seconds.

• Raised the weak spot health of the recently added Drift & Rallycross variations to make them more robust for using in the various activities

• Improved traffic & civilian navigation

• Cost for refiling Nitrous will be correct even when you have multiple Nitrous Tanks

• Speedometer will now work correctly when reversing the player car

• Cars should no longer be reversing on their own when you first enter them

• Smoothened the experience when being pulled out of vehicles

• Police Patrols should be more frequent and follow their intended routes

• Made the police react when observing the player stealing a car

• When the engine has been turned off you can start it by reversing, just as you do with going forward

Combat

• Increased players chance to hit when varying the attacks

• Decreased NPCs chance to defend against shoves

• Decreased NPCs overall chance to defend

• Addressed an issue preventing the NPCs counter attack after parrying predictable attacks

• Worked to prevent jittering NPCs during fights, especially against very defensive enemies

• Tuned parries to show more of the punch animations before the parry animation kicks in

• Prevent excessively rapid follow up strikes when light punches get interrupted

• Fixed an issue where NPCs could throw a Heavy then immediately Parry if they were interrupted during the Heavy

• Preventing enemy NPCs from spinning around after being hit

• Fixed an issue where we showed the incorrect character level border icon. This is what you should see:

  • Smooth circle: This enemy is way below the player character in level and will have lower defensive capabilities

  • Circle with horizontal spikes: This enemy is roughly equal to player level and will have balanced defensive capabilities

  • AdjustedCircle with many spikesThis enemy is way above the player level and will have greatly increased defensive capabilities, such as their ability to evade, parry, and counter attack

Interface and Accessibility

• Added a user setting to be able to toggle on/off Vehicle Healthbars along with the Enemy Healthbars

• Various improvements to the Satnav and GPS markers to handle elevation better, should make it more accurate when you're traveling to a location on or below a bridge for example

• Added an option to skip the in-game cut scenes

• Race UI should now always be displayed correctly during Street Trials

• Increased the range at which we show the POI interact icons to make them generally easier to find when exploring the city

Miscellaneous

• Make the Hidden Stash skill available for users that had previously unlocked the skill prior to the last patch

• Ongoing improvements to the Localization content including various missing prompts, UI elements and incorrect or missing translations

• Ongoing fixes & polish for NPC placement and behaviours as well as world art and environmental issues

• Improved NPCs enter vehicle behavior. Fixed contention over seats. Added fallbacks if the wanted seat is unavailable.

Performance & Stability

• Added a Low Video Memory warning for players running at too high settings for their available VRAM, when this occurs they would get poor performance and hitching

• Continued general improvements to performance as well as reducing potential hitches encountered by the players

• Several crash fixes